Cathie Wood Advises Investors to Track AI Agents' Spending
As AI agents transition from mere assistants to autonomous economic actors capable of spending real money, Cathie Wood, a prominent investor, urges investors to closely monitor where these agents allocate funds. This shift is reshaping the financial networks that support machine-driven commerce.
According to a report by Morph, AI-influenced spending reached $67 billion during the 2025 holiday season, with projections suggesting that agent-influenced commerce could exceed $500 billion in global gross merchandise value by 2028. Key players in developing the necessary infrastructure include Google, Visa, Shopify, Stripe, Coinbase, and OpenAI.
Vaaya's field report from September 2026 highlights that AI agents are executing tens of millions of machine-initiated payments monthly. Major card networks and processors have adopted competing agentic-commerce protocol families, integrating new wallets, gateways, and emerging policy layers.
BlackRock Research indicates that Visa has over 100 partners and more than 20 direct integrations for agent-initiated transactions. The control and authorization systems that determine spending permissions are becoming crucial in this evolving landscape.
TechRadar emphasizes that the transformation is not just about AI agents' autonomy but also about the payment networks and authorization protocols that govern their spending capabilities.